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A five-year-old English child was taken to hospital after coming across a painkiller tablet she found inside a packet of chocolate sweets, online newspaper Metro reported yesterday.

The little girl, Annabelle Stark, had gone out trick-or-treating for Hallowe’en with her three-year-old brother, Joel, in the northern England town of Stockport. She was given a pack of Smarties, a sweet containing chocolate covered in a sugar shell popular among children in the United Kingdom.

Her mother, Kayleigh Stark, gave the packets of sweets to her children as a treat, only to discover that one of the Smarties was a prescription pill, namely the strong anti-inflammatory medicine Diclofenac, which is only available via a doctor’s prescription note. The mother became concerned that Annabelle had eaten a pill and immediately rushed the child to hospital, Metro reported.

The orange-coloured pill, which bears a strong resemblance to a Smartie, was also taken by the mother to show to doctors at Stepping Hill Hospital. She had opened the box this past Thursday and poured the sweets into a bowl for her son when she spotted the medicine, which is believed to have been put in the box of Smarties after the multipack it was in was opened by the original purchaser who gifted it to the children.

Stark told Metro: “It was right at the top (of the Smarties box)”

‘I noticed it because it was slightly bigger and wasn’t shiny like the other Smarties.’

Kayleigh called her husband Chris to notify him of the discovery, and found out that their daughter had already eaten another box of Smarties on Hallowe’en. Worried for her health, they called the 111 non-emergency number run by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), where an advisor asked her to take Annabelle to her nearest hospital accident and emergency ward.

“We just didn’t know if there had been another pill – or what it even was,” she said.

Kayleigh added: ‘Annabelle was fine, we could see that, but we wanted to be on the safe side.’

‘She was quite scared by it all as she didn’t feel poorly. I had to explain to her that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but that there was a naughty pill in her brother’s sweets so we had to check her over.

‘It was quite overwhelming for her.”

Thankfully, Annabelle was given a clean bill of health, although medical staff warned the mother that had her child ingested the Diclofenac, she would have suffered vomiting.

The manufacturer of Smarties sweets, Nestlé UK, and the Greater Manchester Police were both informed of the incident and are currently investigating. In a statement, Nestlé told the Metro: “We are aware of this instance and have been speaking with the family involved. We have very strict controls in place to ensure the quality and safety of all of our products.”. As the box was opened after purchase and before it was given to the Stark family, there is no implication that the pill was included in the pack under Nestlé’s watch.

A Facebook post I shared five years ago. It reads “When people ask me to share the candy I’m eating, I give them the flavor I don’t like” and comes with a forever alone type meme. Truth be told, I just share the sweeties regardless of flavour, unless I’m eating Quality Street, and they’re someone I don’t like, then in that case, they get all the toffees!

Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like a big chunky bar of chocolate. If it’s festive chocolate, even better. One thing I can tell you about retailers in Britain is that they are so passionate about Christmas that they start bringing out festive themed goodies a good few months in advance. In fact the receptionist at my workplace was even telling me how some shops have already started playing Yuletide carols…and this was on Hallowe’en!!

Chocolate maker Cadbury’s, home of the recently revived Wispa bar, among other niceties, has brought out a new chocolate bar that will join their family-sized Dairy Milk collection for the season of goodwill. The latest slabs of cocoa goodness are called ‘Winter Wonderland‘. Instead of the normal square pieces that you can break off and pamper yourself with, this new sweet thang has little Christmas trees instead, alternating between milk chocolate entirely and more yummy milk chocolate topped with white chocolate. Perhaps the inclusion of white chocolate was to steal a march on Nestle and its Milky Bars in the competitive run-up to the big festive season. Maybe they felt a bit bad and Scrooge-like after recently announcing they would no longer make chocolate coins, a Christmas staple, just two months before the big twenty-fifth. Maybe they love snow. But I think Cadbury’s might be on to something here. I have certainly never seen anything like this before, and rum and raisins is not only unpalatable, but it’s getting somewhat antiquated too.

The Winter Wonderland bar looks both appetising and festive. I can imagine little kids (and big kids at heart) itching like they’re sitting on pine needles to chomp down on some cute and irresistable Christmas trees straight after the roast turkey and trimmings. It’s also a good way of sharing out the festive cheer when you’ve got family coming round.

I have a notorious weakness for chocolate. I mean only yesterday I was up at 12.30 in the morning, spooning out and devouring the remains of a Nutella jar at the back of the cupboard that I had almost completely forgotten about. Thank goodness none of my housemates saw me *piercing scream*. Trust me, I had the munchies and chocolate always hits the spot. Which is why I now have extra weight I need to get rid off. Snacking is a sin against the waistline, people. Just say no.

But come Christmas, even if you are constantly on the hunt for the next ‘revolutionary’ diet, you can forgive yourself for hiding the Atkins or Paleo guidebook behind the sofa and allowing yourself the guilty pleasure of deforesting a big bar of Cadbury’s Winter Wonderland chocolate trees. Even if it turns out to be the middle of April and there’s no-one at home to share with *sly wink*. Mum’s the word.

Hot on the heels of our first ever blogging community award, the Hope Unites Globally ‘HUG’ Award, your best place for ramblings of the mind has been nominated yet again. This time the Half-Eaten Mind has been selected to receive the “Super Sweet Award” courtesy of Pallak Sharma, one of the blog’s supporters and loyal fans. Ms. Sharma writes for the “Be-All and End-All” blog which is a beautiful collection of musings on life’s sweet and sour surprises.

Based in India, 21-year-old Pallak is a commerce student at university and despite her busy schedule, still finds time for her favourite hobbies of blogging and penning sweet poems. A big fan of books, music and movies, Sharma created her blog to reach out to people with similar, and not so similar, interests and enjoys writing for and communicating with her network of fans and fellow bloggers, of which I am proud to be part of.

Chocolate-Cake-2006-Jan-04 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Temptation: well played sir, well played….

As part of the rules for nominees, I must present to my Brainiacs the answers to five “super sweet questions” and in turn nominate a ‘baker’s dozen’ bloggers, that is thirteen very lucky souls who in turn must pass it on!!. Let the humiliation begin.

1. Cookies or cake?

Well it depends, I love them both. Like any good Mauritian, I have a sweet tooth that would put a sabre-toothed tiger to shame. Thankfully they are extinct, so I won’t have to worry about getting weird prank calls from big cats annoyed by my previous sentence, and be forced to join a witness protection programme and go into hiding in an undisclosed banana republic. But if I had to choose, it would be cake, because with cake you get more to savour, with tastes that melt-in-your mouth and texture that is light on the stomach. My favourites cakes are Battenbergs, Victoria sponges, birthday cakes with thick icing (frosting) and Cadbury’s chocolate mini Swiss Rolls. Delicious!!

2. Chocolate or Vanilla?

Definitely chocolate. Dark or milk chocolate, it doesn’t matter. As here in Plaistow, London it is getting hotter, so I am looking forward to buying some chocolate ice cream and lollies (popsicles). Especially my old favourite, Feast. Also I really want to try the Magnum Infinity lolly. That stuff looks mental!!

3. Favorite Sweet Treat?

Anyyooo!!..this is a tough one. I eat sweetmeats from a variety of traditions and places, so I will put the answer this way. For traditional British sweets, then it would be chocolate cake pudding. In Mauritius, it would be gateaux orielles. When I am going ancestral and sampling Indian sweets a.k.a mithai then it is gulab jamun, with rasmalai in close second place. I am also partial to Greco-Turkish helva, a delicacy made from sesame seed paste (tahini), although I don’t eat it as much nowadays since I moved home. Not surprisingly, the chocolate-infused variety was the one I usually plucked off the shelf at my local Turkish minimarket.

4. When do you crave sweet things the most?

24/7 bruv!!. Seriously though, my sweet cravings generally tend to accelerate in intensity around about lunchtime. This is when things get very sticky. Ask the people who know me from work and they will tell you just how bad it is!. You will hear the phrase “chocolate sundae” dropped into any conversation about my lunch buying habits sooner or later.

5. Sweet Nick Name?

Being a sentient human-like organism of the male variety, I generally do not get allocated any ‘sweet’ nicknames as such. My mates at work call me Rajah. My main man, a KFC fanatic named Mo Miah has recently started calling me Norman (don’t ask). Others have known me under various monikers, such as ‘Dicky Doughnut’, Lambu (Gujarati for ‘tall’ – I am about 6’5), Jay, Vee, Sanjay, Vilo Milo (thanks Azzy!!) etc. My cousin in Mauritius calls me Deepak. Maybe they would not sound sweet, but I know there’s tonnes of affection behind them.

Well, that’s the Q&A grilling done and dusted. Now to nominate my baker’s dozen – who are now on forth nominees for this peculiar and cute little award.

After this article is published today, I will be messaging all above nominees on their ‘About’ or home pages. If you choose to accept a nomination, please familiarise yourselves with these simple rules/legal mumbo-jumbo as approved by Lucky, the family cat (who doubles as a lawyer on occasions. No win, no fee basis. Extras will cost you a box of Happy Shopper cat biscuits. The ones that smell like mummified prawns left down the back of a radiator in summer.) :-